Matt Sledge is the Rhode Island Director at FairVote. After joining the organization, he has worked on a wide variety of projects in the Ocean State. He has overseen advocacy and outreach for key reforms like thenational popular vote, youth voter pre-registration, and direct election of US Senators in case of vacancy. He has made numerous appearance on local television and radio. He has also authored a curriculum on thehistory of voting, called Rhode Island Suffrage (http://rhodeislandsuffrage.org) available online for free to stateteachers. The lesson plans are modeled after FairVote’s national Learning Democracy curriculum, and the dynamic website is constantly updated with current events and historical references concerning the history of voting.

Before starting at FairVote, Matt graduated with a magna cum laude degree in Political Science from Brown University. His senior honors thesis, awarded a prize for Best Thesis in Comparative Politics, focused on Shiafactionalism in southern Iraq. It included a discussion of the impact of the closed party list system used in that country’s first free elections. Matt was also managing editor of Brown’s College Hill Independent newspaper. He lives in Providence.